It blends funk from San Francisco and latin soul and boogaloo from New York. Two sides one story. From changing guitars to latin beats – it’s all soul really.

The tunes come from vinyl compilations and ends with the sublime Some Lonely Heart by Ronnie Marks. Many thanks to Soul Boy Jim at Sounds of the Universe for turning me on to that (I was only buying a boogaloo compilation at the time!)

Check out The Montague Arms, Queens Road, Peckham, the strangest pub on earth

June 3rd @ The Montague Arms

Another interesting line-up from Shopping Trolley Promotions including Pulka, all the way from Berlin on Friday June 3rd 2011. Also playing Drain Cover and Psycho Yogi, with DJ’ing from the fabulous Trip Team.

Heaven and Earth is John Martyn’s final album. Recorded in his home in Ireland all the tracks were finished it seems some time before his death and now finally released.

For those of us touched by the man and his music he holds a special place, outside the commercial industry of the “music business”. With John it is always personal.

On a first play I was not really sure but with the assistance of some herbal remedy and a bottle of wine I have to say I am regular listener.

I felt compelled to review this after reading a few reviews on the net, which for me missed the point. This is not I feel meant to be a fully produced release but the last tunes as they went down. The reviews seem to suggest these tracks are not fully edited or arranged I feel losing the point of what is actually here. It is really all about the groove and that is certainly in there, taking ideas and going with them, soulful and gently funky. Listening to the album as whole I was reminded of why I loved John live so much, the way he could take a vibe and run with it, seeing him up there just with the tune his voice and guitar, the band slipping and sliding around him.

Of course this is not Solid Air or One World but it is not meant to be. Time and life moves on and this is where he was at. If you want those earlier albums they are still all there – you can hear more of those tunes on the radio show at the link below. This is where all that stuff ended up.

There were some comments which imply his voice is not so strong and his guitar playing is somewhat muted. I have to say if that is a ‘shot’ voice, but it is still connected directly to his soul. The guitar is still there but as always it not always used upfront and straight, (A thing he never liked – it’s all about feel not flash) and it is the voicings and twists weaving the the sound together that give the tunes depth as it swerves in and out of the mix, often leaving you guessing if it is a synth or a guitar. He also does the odd bit of rocking out as in Bad Company.

Don’t forget this is the only man on the planet who can actually make Phil Collins sound anything like cool!

The last track Willing to Work (originally the title track) is an eight-minute track noted as a loose jam in the reviews but to these ears is classic JM, big groove, abstract vocals and the use of backing singers with fine Hammondy organ. The tune finishes with John’s dog Gizmo barking along, as John sings, “So willing to work I even bought my dog along” – well it put a smile on my face. Any album that ends like that is OK in my book . . . .

Just time for a quick London party before everyone hits the road, so this Sat 14th MayCLUB NEUROTICA teams up with BRIXTON JAM to present Mid-May Madness, with live shows from Back to the Planet, Falcon Burns & Birds of Prey, and Beatboxer Marvill.

3keybob and Clare are gigging tomorrow night along with Paradise 9 and ska band The Real Bad Habits.

It is a birthday, party for our friend Alex who is 18 years old. He suffers from Adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) is a rare, inherited metabolic disorder. In this disorder, the fatty covering (myelin sheath) of nerve fibres in the brain is lost, and the adrenal gland degenerates, usually leading to progressive neurological disability. Alex was not diagnosed with ALD until 2001, although the symptoms were progressing some years before a MRI scan diagnosed this very rare condition.We all hope to make this night a really special night for Alex.

If you have checked our site you will be aware of a fantompowa radio. The music shows are split into two main pages; one contains reggae and dub mixes and the second with a mixture of soul, funk, r’n’b [of the old sort], the odd bit of Jazz, and two recent dubstep mixes.
The rationale of the programmes is to present tunes wherever possible from the original vinyl to reflect the kind of sets I play out when DJ’ing with the Trip Team, and create a journey in sound.
My first love has always been old school reggae, which I have been collecting since the days of punk when the likes of Burning Spear, Culture, and the wonderful Misty in Roots plied their trade in the UK on a regular basis. Two Sevens Clashed and DBC was in full swing. A major inspiration and source of tunes were the regular reggae shows then on the radio. Many an early Saturday morning spent hovering over a cassette machine to make sure I got the whole of the Manasseh show, as well as Joey Jay’s Word Sound and Power and then Tony William’s Rice and Peas on a Sunday afternoon; all providing a treasure trove of deep roots music.
Those were also of course the days of real record shops that actually sold vinyl and tracking down tunes was always a part of life; Daddy Kool, Dub Vendor in Ladbroke Grove and the record shacks of South East London proving a great hunting ground. Sadly few, if any, are left - Dub Vendor are still in a reduced space in Clapham, but there seem few of the old guard that remain in business.
The rise of the CD and the demise of the record shop found me drifting from vinyl until a pair of 1210’s reignited my obsession. In these times there is at least a small resurgence in re-pressed reggae, soul and R’n’B vinyl which are there – the web helps and I spend a lot of time in my favourite shopSounds of the Universe with piles of vinyl and staff who love the stuff.

I put the shows together because I love the tunes and want to spread the word. So if you love the tunes get out there and track them down; the hunt is always a rewarding experience and don’t forget there are plenty of charity shops out there with dusty boxes of old records just waiting to be re-discovered, cheap enough to to take a chance on.
Come back to the blog for more info on the specific shows; and any comments etc are always welcome, as are any suggestions for different sources for tunes or what the music means to you.

CURRENT FAVE TUNE – THE MAYTONES – WHO CAN’T HEAR MUST FEEL VERSION 7″ Who Can’t Feel 02

We hope that the blog will be more than a series of obituaries, but within an hour of posting our first entry on the new fantompowa music blog we have heard the sad news that Poly Styrene, the lead singer of X Ray Spex, died yesterday of breast cancer.

Poly Styrene 1977

Originally from Brixton, then Bromley [the borough on the Kent side of Lewisham] from where many of the original punk contingent first emerged in the mid-1970′s, the then Marianne Joan Elliott-Said [3 July 1957 – 25 April 2011] left home as a teenager to travel round the free festivals and tag along with the original [New Age] traveller community.

In 1976 she released a reggae single “Silly Billy” as Mari Elliot , but it was seeing the Sex Pistols in a near empty venue by Hastings Pier which was a cathartic moment that led to her advertising in Melody Maker for young punx to form a band, who then became the fantastic X Ray Spex .

The headlong rush of their first single, the anthemic Oh Bondage Up Yours and the following album meant that both became iconic products of the Punk movement.

Poly Styrene defied all definitions and by doing so she liberated a whole generation of girls to be themselves, rather than slowly transforming into their mums without thinking there was a choice. She was the daughter of a Scots-Irish legal secretary and a dispossessed Somali aristocrat who made no concessions to the bourgeois expectations of the suburbs and the reactionary mood of the early 1970′s.

During the 1980′s and nineties she was more an inspiration from the past, hidden away with the Hare Krishna community, but in the 21st century she started to re-emerge into the public light. She produced a recent album of her own songs with Youth from Killing Joke which was called Generation Indigo [2010]. She had also been doing an increasing number of gigs in recent years, one of which was to take part in the Victoria Park RAR 2008 30th anniversary concert.

As someone who was at the first one, I can say that one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life was being in the crowd near the stage waiting impatiently for hours in the park with thousands of others, and then seeing the slight figure bouncing across the stage in her day-glo oufit shouting the line ‘People say little girls should be seen and not heard, well I say . . . ‘.

As you can imagine, the crowd were hers – and because of who she was, with her strengths and frailties and that stand-out character that led her through the different paths of her life, she was someone who could represent all of us; and for that she was much loved . . .

She was a burning star in the first year or two of Punk, but by 1978 was hospitalised and diagnosed with schizophrenia, and later in 1991 with bipolar disorder.

It has been reported that her doctor gave her painkillers for months, until she demanded an MRI scan, which only then revealed how far her cancer had spread.

We can only hope that she didn’t suffer too much, and send commiserations to her family and friends, particularly her daughter [Celeste Bell-Dos Santos, singer in Spanish group Debutant Disco].

She changed the lives of our generation, and left the world a better place by being brave enough to be herself – and by writing some great songs which caught the spirit of the time, and in the way of all great art, transcended it.

This is the blog for 3KS – aka The Three Key Sound, whose website at fantompowa.eu has been running since 1998.
We also have a YouTube page where you can see some of our videos and film we have done of festivals or gigs featuring our friends from South East London.

We originally started the site to focus on our own music and that of our fellow sonic explorers from the Lewisham / Deptford/ New Cross area; as well as highlighting music that we love and respect.

DJ Tripteam Bob [of the 3KS] has produced a number of radio shows in which he draws on his vast vinyl library to spin tunes from JA`s finest, rare dub, blues and soul. They are being listened to around the globe – and he will be posting here to let the audience know why he`s picked the tunes, strange bits of biography and information about the singers, labels and the places worth visiting for vinyl junkies.

We will also be using the blog to record important events – such as the deaths of the great Sugar Minnot and the South East London based Gregory Isaacs earlier this year.
Respect also to the late Smiley Culture and as explanations are demanded for the still unexplained tragedy surrounding his death, we remember that he started out recording tunes in a studio in New Cross – under the second-hand car lot once owned by the Richardson gangsters, now a supermarket service station.

We will also be featuring events and releases from our mates [that is how the world works apparently]; venues, gigs and articles; as well as drawing attention to any activity in the global underground or its commercial arm by 3KS.

Finally, the central reason why we started this blog – we have 35,000 hits a month on our sites. We have never taken any advertising; and have maintained this [and our other websites] as an information resource for the underground, not the corporate machine. That is why we want a forum where our readers and listeners can go to give us some feedback, share information or just let us know how the music grabs you . . .